It's important that your data has reliability which creates trust in your metrics from others.
To ensure confidence in your data, your data gathering process must be repeatable and reproducible. Therefore how you categorize items must be MECE (Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive) and have good Operational definitions.
In my home, I have an obnoxiously large world travel map. When I first designed it, it was MECE with pins indicating where I’ve traveled, where my wife has traveled, and where we have traveled together. And, we had a good Operational Definition for when we wanted to count a city as visited and if “together” meant at the same time or included individual visits.
Now, when I added Homes, National Parks, and Sporting Events to my design, things were no longer MECE. And, even with strong Operational Definitions, the rules are too complex for consistent accuracy. For example, if my wife and I visited a city together and then I later went to a Sporting Event, which pin color would I use? While the count of cities is correct, I’d be miscounting within the categories.
Of course, my map is just for fun and there are no Travel Police (that I know of) coming to audit my map, but it does demonstrate problems with properly gathering data.
In business, I often see people wanting to count and classify items into interesting and potentially valuable groupings. But, without clear MECE categories and good Operational Definitions, then how items will be counted and grouped can be different based on who is doing the counting. So, to ensure both reliability and confidence in your metrics, it is important to ensure your groupings are MECE and have Operational Definitions that drive repeatability for yourself and reproducibility by others.
That's my 8020 Framework. What's yours?
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